


Foxtrot, or When Foxes Stuck in Boxes Turn Out for the Better

by nic_takes_Ls (nic_L)



Category: Dream SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: + techno gets to be unwarrantedly dramatic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Family Fluff, Fox Hybrid Wilbur Soot, Gen, Shapeshifter Wilbur Soot, Technoblade-centric, Witch Philza, a refridgerator box, and, featuring:, fox purrs, getting forcibly adopted after your fox brother jumps through some man's window, hellsbore, human technoblade, incense that makes you sneeze, quite a bit of rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:09:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29436579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nic_L/pseuds/nic_takes_Ls
Summary: “Please, man, I’m begging you this time, actually beggin’ and everything. I- Wilbur-”Techno's hands come up to grip the rim of the box and he stands on his toes to look down inside.“Pspspspspsps?Wilbur?”Techno’s brother is staring up at him with deep brown eyes, faux-innocent and wide. Wilbur is also a fox.
Relationships: Technoblade & Philza, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & Philza
Comments: 24
Kudos: 262
Collections: TWB Valentine's Event [2021]





	Foxtrot, or When Foxes Stuck in Boxes Turn Out for the Better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leggyman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leggyman/gifts).



> happy valentines owo!!!!
> 
> i originally had a very different tm idea for what to do for this event, but then blinked at the plot summary and realized it would probably have taken much more time than i had. SO! speedran fic in 2 days wooooo
> 
>   
> And yeee this is kinda a bit of a roleswap bc Wilbur is usually the human and Techno the hybrid/shapeshifter and this is the other way round.  
> 
> 
>   
> Anyways, hope you like this, leggy!!  
> 

Techno is desperately trying to keep his voice down even as he is currently trying to persuade his brother to come out of a too-deep cardboard refrigerator box in an alley.    
  
“Wilbur. Wilbur, please. Please don’t do this.” His voice is slightly echoing between the tall apartment buildings making up the alleyway, the dark and cold bricks not replying to his plea and nor his brother. 

Techno wraps his arms around himself and shudders, tugging his too-thin hoodie closer to his frame. The damp of the slums of the city is familiar but still unwelcome, and seeps into his bones, foreboding the coming storm, most likely. It’s been sprinkling all day, and his hair is already dark brown with water, but it could get a million times worse.   
  
“Look, I’m not going to wait for you if you stay here. Get out of the box before the rain gets worse again. I know that if I reach in there to grab you, you are going to bite me and last time we did that it got infected.”    
  
Wilbur doesn’t move, doesn’t reply, simply remains still where Techno can’t even see him over the tall box’s opening.    
  
Techno narrows his eyes before turning on his heel, scuffed sneakers squeaking on the pavement underfoot.    
  
“Alright! That’s it! I’m leaving!” He trills, still coming out in half a monotone and stepping exaggerated on the floor to mimic the sound of his footsteps if he were walking away.    
  
He pauses, looks over his shoulder, and waits a half a beat, one hand coming up to brush away the short blond-brown hair plastered to his forehead. 

Wilbur still doesn’t move. He sighs and stumbles back to the box, starting to climb a stack of wooden pallet lids to try and peer over the edge.    
  
“Please, man, I’m  _ begging _ you this time, actually beggin’ and everything. I- Wilbur-”    
  
His hands come up to grip the rim of the box and he stands on his toes to look down inside.    
  
“ _ Pspspspspsps? _ Wilbur?”

Techno’s brother is staring up at him with deep brown eyes, faux-innocent and wide. Wilbur is also a fox.    
  
“Seriously, man?”

Wilbur opens his fanged jaws and replies, “Kar-ack!”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Wilbur’s been stuck as a fox for much too long, now, really. Too long since Wilbur’s appeared as his own human body or said a (human) word, and while it isn’t the first time Wilbur’s shapeshifting’s been jammed, it’s the longest time, surpassing even that one long game of hide and seek that had ended up lasting 24 hours. It’s been a week. 

Techno’s pretty sure he knows why Wilbur is stuck, and at the same time has no idea how to fix it. 

Wilbur and Technoblade have been stuck together, running around the backalleys and sleeping under stars on rooftops for as long as they can remember, no other memories than just the two of them finding a new place to sleep through the night. Techno is a normal human, nothing to cast him out of an orphanage for any visible reason but his own hatred of the idea of it, while Wilbur is-    
  
Well, he’s a fox shapeshifter. But not a very good one, in the way that his teeth are forever too-sharp, ears pointed and tipped brown at the edges, eyes often more slitted than not and his nails dark and constantly needing to be trimmed. And that’s not to mention the small noises that naturally creak from his throat, the ‘ka-racks’ and whimpers and barks and even the odd way his heavier breathing lilts out, his laughs high-pitched and wild.    
  
Techno doesn’t remember how they met and Wilbur not how he ended up on the streets, but they’ve both come to the conclusion that Wilbur had something not-pleasant involved, what with the large, shiny pink scar that marrs the back of his neck, distorted with age and still recognizable as fox’s fangs. 

The routine of their daily life is typically one of Wilbur slipping into his lean fox’s form and running through the shadows of the markets, silently taking food or items they need in his jaws and placing them in one of the collection areas they’ve designated together for Techno to take to their alleyway. The bad part of Esempee ~~(the only part they’ve ever lived)~~ is one where the vendors already don’t have as much of a handle or inventory of their wares, especially with the tendency for their more of their more illegal wares making it a danger for them to write their stock down. Techno and Wilbur don’t resell anything, just gather food and other necessary materials.    
  
But a few unlucky times, Wilbur will get caught.

Sometimes a dog leashed to a shoppe stall will scent him and send him scurrying with a volley of barks, other times he’ll end up getting a boot in the face by a vendor looking down at just the wrong time. There was even one time where an old woman with too-deep eyes and hellsbore tucked behind her ear had looked at him and called out ‘Shapeshifter!’ to his face.    
  
That winter night was also one Wilbur had been trapped in his own body, in russet wiry limbs and a throat he couldn’t sing out of. Techno had let Wilbur sleep tucked under his hoodie and over his chest. They’d both been slightly embarrassed when Wilbur woke up human and nearly smothered Technoblade.  
  
The first time Techno had seen Wilbur since he’d slipped off his human skin to go stealing that morning, his fox had run straight into his legs, a distant chorus of particularly vicious barks coming from a street over. Techno quickly dropped to his knees as Wilbur had skittered across the cobbles, crawled over to where Wilbur was shaking and shuddering, seemingly unharmed and no trace of an unnatural shade of red in his fur. His tiny throat was making high-pitched whines though, entire vulpin frame trembling and breaths coming in too-ragged for an animal of his size. Techno immediately picked up Wilbur in his arms and splayed him over his lap, let his brother’s panting slow and body slip into gentle sleep, every inhale still making a half-whimper.    
  
After Techno lay Wilbur to rest on a mattress covered in a half-bleached sheet, he’d crept around the corner to find a figure draped in a dark cloak walking away with a trio of large hunting dogs- Maybe half-dire wolves- tugging at    
  
And Wilbur hadn’t returned to his human form since, hadn’t approached the usual marketplace or even let Techno stay out of his sight for more than a few minutes. Techno didn’t really mind too much at first, just focused on making sure his brother really was alright and unharmed. Besides, Wilbur was warm and a faint weight on his chest every night, his nose buried into Techno’s neck and tail draped over his arm. Wilbur had even kept up his job of finding food, albeit much more petty thefts like plates of food from windows and stale bread from baskets.   
  
But Wilbur was also the only other person Techno could speak to, the only other 11-year old he’d ever met, and even though Wilbur’s ears twitched and minute expressions on his vulpine face would change along with Techno’s conversation, there were no words, no smug replies or melodic laughs to the quips Techno made to himself.    
  
He missed Wilbur, somehow, even as his brother would sit right beside him.    
  
And the fox itself had been acting more erratic lately, no signs of distress at his state but more instinctive and yet paranoid reactions, like the claws that dug into Techno’s thighs at the sound of a faint yap of a puppy in the distance. Like-    
  
Like Wilbur refusing to climb out of a giant refrigerator box.    
  
  


* * *

  
  
Techno’s grip on his quiet voice is fraying slightly at Wilbur’s insistence on staying still. He closes his eyes and holds his breath, listening, and then screws up his face at the silence.   
  
“Wilbur. There’s- There’s not even any dogs around or anything. I- I’m going to-” Techno cuts himself off, rolls back his shoulders.    
  
“I’m going to push over this box. I swear I’m gonna do it, Wilbur, so get out or face the consequences.”    
  
Techno raises himself on his toes to look down at Wilbur once more. His brother is growling, fur along his back raised and ultimately not very intimidating from his size and that particular aspect of almost looking like a half-drowned rat.    
  
“Your own fate befalls you.” He says with little ceremony.    
  
He pushes the box over and Wilbur rolls out of it into a puddle, iridescent and dark with spilled oil. Wilbur quickly picks himself up and shakes out his fur while Techno drops from his perch of palette lids onto the cobbles, half slipping on the wet stones himself.    
  
He huffs, hunching his shoulders with a shiver before calling to Wilbur. “Alright, can we please go home now-”   
  
Wilbur looks back, whiskers on one side still dripping, and takes off to the other side of the alley, away from their own.    
  
“Wilbur?!” Techno yelps, and his ratty yellow-chrome sneakers slap the ground as he runs after the muddy red blur. Slowly, steadily heavier rain streaks his glasses.   
  
Wilbur has an upper hand on speed, what with his claws digging into the grooves of the stone and four legs. The white tip of his tail is the last part of him seen as he turns a corner and Techno skids around the edge and stops, stomach sinking as he watches Wilbur leap through an open window.    
  
There’s a surprised shout, obviously not from Wilbur, and Techno’s heart stutters when he darts forwards and sees a figure cornering Wilbur into a wall.    
  
“Oh, god,” He murmurs to himself and runs to the door of the apartment Wilbur’s tossed himself into.

  
He pounds on the door, rain now coming down harder and his chest burning for air.    
  
There’s nothing for a moment, and then the door opens and Techno stumbles from where his weight was pressed against it.   
  
“Oh-”   
  
There’s a man with cropped red-blond hair and in a sweater and jeans towering before him, flitting blue eyes up and down Techno’s frame. And in his arms is Wilbur, curiously still with a hand gripping his loose scruff of fur at the back of his neck.    
  
“Can I help you?” The man says. “It’s not exactly a good time, I don’t believe. It’s raining.”    
  
Techno’s voice falters and cracks when he speaks.    
  
“That’s my fox. Sir.”   
  
The man’s eyebrows lift. He shifts his weight and looks down at Wilbur, who doesn’t move a muscle aside from his eyes meeting Technoblade’s.    
  
“They jumped through my window. Why were they running from you if they’re yours- Uh, what’s your name?”   
  
Techno can feel his shoulders tense at the question of his name, but the skeptical tone in this man’s voice tells him that he won’t be getting Wilbur out of here without giving it up.    
  
“Techno. Blade. Technoblade. And he was running because- Uh.”   
  
“‘Uh’ what?”   
  
“I pushed the box he was in over. But not like in a bad way, I promise, he wouldn’t get out and it was starting to rain worse-” Techno trips over his words with his own tongue, freezing when the man holds up a hand.”   
  
“You can explain inside, you’re right about the rain. Come in, come in- And I’m Phil, by the way.”   
  
The inside of Phil’s apartment is staggeringly much nicer than the outside of it, or even the rest of the apartments in this part of the city; warm and orange light cast on the walls from a fireplace, plants growing on every windowsill, two white shuttered doors closing the kitchen off from the dining area.    
  
As much as Techno wants to stare at it all, so unused to being in an actual building in the first place, his gaze is locked on Wilbur, still staring back with his wide, half-wild brown eyes, faintly pleading in expression.    
  
“How did you get him to not bite you?”   
  
Phil turns where he was looking at the window Wilbur had jumped through, now closed and revealed to be at the edge of his dining room.    
  
“I’ve got a hand on his scruff. Quite a few animals tend to go limp and not tear your arm off if you just hold them there. And besides, he’s so small I don’t think he would be able to get his jaws around my arm anyways.”   
  
And with that, Phil moves his hand from Wilbur’s scruff to behind his ears, rubbing the muddied fur there with his hand in a claw. Techno wants to warn him, but before he can, a low rumble bubbles from the fox’s throat.    
  
Techno’s never heard Wilbur purr before. Judging by Wilbur’s very wide eyes, he didn’t know he could either.    
  
“Uh-”   
  
“Aww. And foxes are supposedly scary, huh. He’s just a little fur baby,” Phil coos to Wilbur, whose eyes are starting to droop and purrs become louder.   
  
“Sir- Phil-” A desperate tone does end up coming through Techno’s voice as he grows more uncomfortable by the second. “I can prove that’s my fox.”   
  
Phil’s hand slows on Wilbur’s head, and he nods. “Go ahead, then.”   
  
Techno shifts on his feet, tugs his hoodie neck down a bit. “Wilbur?” He holds out an arm, nods at his brother.    
  
Phil loosens his arms around Wilbur’s frame, and the fox drops to the floor and immediately leaps onto Techno’s outstretched arm, drapes himself over the shoulders of Techno’s hoodie.    
  
Techno sighs at the familiar weight of his brother, and Phil seems to ease too.   
  
“His name is Wilbur, eh? Well then, Techno, why were you chasing your shapeshifter friend Wilbur into my window?”    
  
Wilbur’s body stills just as Techno’s breath stops momentarily as he processes Phil’s words. Techno suddenly feels quite small, and wants to tug Wilbur into his arms and run. But something about Phil’s gaze doesn’t speak of malevolence, and the hands Phil holds up as he seemingly realizes the sudden tension are empty and weaponless.   
  
“Hey, hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything at all, alright? Me? I’m a witch. I’ve got magicks too. We’ve all got secrets, and I won’t tell yours.”   
  
Phil steps forwards, just a step, before lowering himself to a knee and placing his hands on Techno’s arms, running a thumb down one of Wilbur’s paws.    
  
Techno lets his breath, ready to turn into heaves, slow, and Wilbur nudges his nose into Techno’s neck.    
  
“Wilbur- Wilbur’s my brother. Kinda. We- we live outside, and I’m human and he’s a shapeshifter, but he’s gotten stuck- He’s been trapped as a fox for like 6 days. I don’t know how to help him.” The last sentence comes out quieter, and Phil’s slowly dragged Techno into a hug of sorts, Techno’s own arms around his own waist and Wilbur nearly in a scarf around his neck.    
  
Phil’s voice is soothing as he speaks. “Live outside?”   
  
“Yeah. Like- I dunno, usually we climb up and sleep on a roof or something. Stormy nights we stay in that one empty building a few streets over.” 

Phil hums. “What do you think about staying here- At least for a little while. I know a few things about shapeshifters, and I think that staying in one place instead of having to find a different place to sleep every night might make it easier for Wilbur to turn back into a boy again.”   
  
Techno hesitates. Wilbur licks the back of his neck and makes a small noise.    
  
“Okay.”   
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Wilbur is still a fox even about a week later. But it’s nice, living with Phil, Techno thinks, and he blinks at Wilbur in shock when he realizes the red fur on his brother’s back is sleeker than he’s ever remembered it, and it’s plush and thick when he brushes his hand down it. He doesn’t look like a massive rat, and on the morning of the seventh day of waking up in Phil’s guest bedroom with Wilbur at his feet, he tells him that. Wilbur glares, and then butts his head into Techno’s hand to be scratched behind the ears.    
  
As the day passes, another storm does too, making the sky the same shade of grey as the evening Techno and Wilbur had ended up in Phil’s house.    
  
Phil is cooking dinner, some stew of one sort or another in a pot on his stove, humming to himself absently. Techno sits at the dining room table watching Wilbur sit on the windowsill, occasionally pawing at raindrops chasing each other down the glass. There’s a plant drooping with pink-red flowers- Hellsbore, he’s pretty sure Phil called it- that Wilbur keeps bludgeoning with his tail, and beside it is more flowers and herbs, half of which Techno can’t remember. He’s more interested in the enchanted weapons Phil has a room full of.    
  
There’s incense burning and letting smoke curl up to the ceiling. It isn’t the same one that made Technoblade sneeze for ten minutes straight after Phil first showed him how to light it, but he’s still slightly wary around it.    
  
There’s the light above the table and Techno’s head made from glass bottles, painted and letting multicoloured streaks of refracted sunlight dapple the walls, reminding him of the oil sheen he’d become acquainted to seeing in the puddles out on the street. They’re nicer though.    
  
Phil changes the song he’s mumbling to a different one, one that Techno’s familiar with, and Wilbur turns from the windowsill ~~(nearly knocking out the hellsbore pot)~~ with his ear pricked, and tries to hum along, but only strange little fox noises spill from his throat.    
  
Phil laughs, and shakes his head in faux dismay. “I’m sure you really do have a wonderful voice, but you’ll have to wait until you have human vocal chords to sing along.”   
  
Wilbur turns away with an exaggerated pout and Techno breaks out into laughter.   
  
That night after dinner and in the middle of a movie on the couch, Wilbur suddenly becomes long limbs and brown curly hair and rather tail-less on Phil’s lap.    
  
Phil blinks twice and greets him with a smile.    
  
Techno and Wilbur never end up sleeping on a rooftop under a cold night sky anymore. They can still see the stars from their new bedroom window. 


End file.
